Musings and mutterings from Perthshire

Tag Archives: Team GB

Whilst everybody was enjoying the spectacle of the greatest Games on Earth there was one group of people who are doing their level best to spoil it for you. Welcome to the UK Unionists. If there was a gold medal for petty political point scoring up there on the podium would be the anti-independence politicians and commentators. In rhetoric reminiscent of Labour claims that devolution would kill the SNP ‘stone dead’, time and again we heard claims the SNP are opposed to Team GB and that every medal marks a death blow to Scottish independence aspirations.

They condemned the Scottish Government for wishing our Scottish athletes well. They then criticised us for providing a Scottish showcase opened to fully engage with the Olympics. They scoured through ten year old speeches to misquote us out of context to prove that we’re pathologically opposed to the Games. They were even quicker off the blocks than Usain Bolt. Within five minutes of Danny Boyle’s fantastic opening ceremony, there they were, declaring game, set and match for the UK state.

All of it utter nonsense, and all of it grating with the Scottish people who just wanted to enjoy the Games free from politicians trying to hijack this spectacle for their own ends. And after all their incessant efforts, Guess what? Opinion polls show that if anything the Olympics have actually increased support for independence! Talk about getting it wrong and aiming that blunderbuss at the foot. Even when presented with this evidence they just can’t seem to stop. Gordon Brown and Douglas Alexander are the latest senior unionist politicians to forlornly mine this empty seam, using the Olympics, because they can’t come up with any compelling or convincing case for the Union themselves.

How people vote in the Independence Referendum will be dependent on many things. Should the Westminster Tories continue to determine Scotland’s future? Would Scotland be better off in control of its own resources? Does Scotland want to make its own peaceful contribution to world affairs without being drawn into illegal wars? These are the issues that will determine the outcome of the Referendum, not a Games, regardless of their scale or success.

And anyway, Team GB is as much my team as it is the most enthusiastic fan from any other part of these isles.

While I would naturally like to see a Scottish team march round the Olympic stadium under the St Andrew’s cross as an independent nation, I cheered on Team GB till I was hoarse. I recognise the immense pride of Scottish athletes in representing their country and of course they should be able to stand under their current national flag and take great satisfaction in being a member of Team GB.

As an independent nation we will be represented by a Team Scotland in any future Olympics. That is what normal independent countries do in international sporting events. But for now we are part of the UK and all of us in Scotland are enjoyed our team’s success, regardless of how we vote or what we think about Scotland’s constitutional future.

But probably the most ludicrous notion is that the Games has shown that we in Scotland will have to choose between being Scottish or British. This is a theme that has gained much currency amongst these anti-independence commentators recently and shows a singular, probably willful, misunderstanding about what independence is about.

What we want with independence is to complete the powers of our Parliament and take responsibility for our own affairs. We want to recalibrate the political relationship of the UK state and it has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘Britishness’. That is the social union and none of it goes anywhere with independence. We will still share a British island and we will still enjoy our fantastic relationship, heritage and British culture.

But in cheering on Team GB did that mean that I was entirely happy or satisfied with all the arrangements for the London Olympics? Of course not. Like the Tories in opposition, and more recently like Labour in raising concerns about the G4S shambles, I tried as much as possible to hold the Westminster Government to account – that is my job as an MP.

But these issues have come and gone, and so, unfortunately have the Olympics. In two years time Glasgow will host the Commonwealth Games where we will compete as Team Scotland. What is as certain as Scottish gold is that those self-same anti-independence politicians who have so valiantly tried to politicise these Games will be screaming blue murder at any perceived notion of nationalist politicisation.

But do you know what? Just as the London Olympics has absolutely nothing to do with the Referendum, neither will the Glasgow Commonwealth Games.

So that’s the Olympics up and running and the biggest show on earth is underway. Already it seems like the whole nation is gripped on the prospects for team GB and enjoying the spectacle of the world’s greatest athletes participating in the greatest sporting event in the world.

And what a treat Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony was. In an emotionally charged, frenetic spectacle he seemed to sum up a cultural history of Britain that all of us were seamlessly able to relate to. In his vision of this new Jerusalem he took us on a cultural tour de force that united Brunel with the Arctic Monkeys. It was as audacious as it was breathtaking.

Almost predictably though some politicians couldn’t resist trying to politicise the event and use it to make their own observations about modern Britain. First up was a little known Tory MP, Aidan Burley, who took it as an opportunity to lament what he saw as the excesses of multicultural Britain. In a series of ill-considered tweets he found himself totally outside the mainstream popular response, bemoaning the show as a left wing, multicultural conspiracy.

Predictably, he was followed by Scotland’s unionist politicians who seemed bizarrely to suggest that this show undermined the case for Scottish independence. Unable to make any cogent case for the retention of the UK themselves they hijacked this show for their own narrow political ends. What they of course failed to appreciate is that what we saw was the social union in action. Danny Boyle produced an attractive culmination of the 300 years that we have shared and built together on these islands, and none of this disappears with Scottish independence. In fact it will instead be enhanced and re-energized as we rebuild new British partnerships based on equality and mutual respect.

These unionists also fail to appreciate that independence is all about recalibrating the political relationship of the United Kingdom. What we want is to complete the powers of our Parliament, bring decision making home to Scotland and make our own peaceful contribution to world affairs. Probably the biggest irony is that the strong social ethos of Friday, particularly the feature on the NHS, is being undermined by a Conservative Government we didn’t vote for and with whom Labour believes Scotland is better together!

We relate to what we saw on Friday because Scotland is culturally secure with a powerful sense of itself. Britishness is one of our many identities and one that will be forever cherished in an independent Scotland.